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What can I use to view DDS files?


Johnn123
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Hey all, im wondering what program I can use to view DDS files. I was Nero on my other computer, but it isnt installed on this one... I tried nVidea's thumbnail viewer but it didnt work for whatever reason, and installing to different directories didnt work has well. Any suggestions? Thx

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I like it the most because it's simplest, fastest (at least it seems to me) and it has options to open draw menu, enter text...

Oh, it's not the fastest at all, Fast Stone Viewer, for instance, beats it by miles in terms of overall speed.

Well, to tell the truth, IrfanView was indeed my very favorite image viewer program in the past. But since a couple of months it isn't. Of course it all depends on things you like and need to work with, but for browsing photographs (in both jpg and raw formats) FSViewer is superior in comparison to Irfan (to all the information like meta data, exif, zooming, color managed images, you can access in FSV much quicker than in Irfan).

I can agree that IrfanView is one of the best from all-arounders out there (and I still use it for few things), but there are some apps and programs that do specific things just better and faster.

The same with DDS viewer - the best is WTV which Vince mentioned - it displays all the information you may need in one place (format, size, mipmaps) and you can switch back and forth between RGB composite and alpha channel which is very very useful (shift+A or ctrl+A displays the alpha channel; U switches back to RGB composite).

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Yes, that's why I put parenthesis. :thumbup: But I should have written 'of those that I tried' or something like that.

I'm quite happy with irfran for what I need it.

There is one thing that I would like to solve though, maybe someone knows how. When I switch view in folder from list or icons to thumbnails, jpg and other formats display little pictures, but dds always stays default and without preview. Can it be solved? (I'm on Windows XP)

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  • 5 years later...

The best DDS viewer depends on your graphics card.  WTV (Nvidia's dds viewer) displays DDS as they would be seen in your game except for the purple transparency background if you have an Nvidia card.  If you have an AMD card I'm sure the viewer will sabotage one way or another.  Third party programs, third party programs tend to be inconsistent or horrible at viewing DX3 and DX5.  One example, I was working with tree and branch textures always used the color adjust feature in infraview shift + U only to find out it wasn't consistent especially when it came to DX3 and DX5.  I would cut part of the texture out and replace with another, and the static part of the image would turn a blue hue, instead of looking like snow it would look like ice.  This was an infraview artifact for DX3, and if I would have used WTV I would have realized there wasn't a problem.  If you work with DX3 or DX5 its important take the alpha into account since it controls how much light bounces back.  Under most circumstances you want most or all light to bounce back especially when it comes to terrain otherwise your texture looks like the game engine's sunlight.  I'm sure AMD has there own texture tool or one they recommended, if you have AMD card go with that.  Another thing wtv, shows you the type of texture it is (DX1, DX3, DX5) and no other program does, not Windows, not infraview etc....

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